Posted by: Jeff (kidd@islc.net) on Mon Jan 10 22:00:07 2000

Hi all,

Steve, I skimmed through much of the information at www.baumbat.com, and a few questions occured to me that I thought you might be able to answer.

The effect of grip has been discussed frequently here and on other sites, and I've noticed you've always taken pains to qualify your statement that grip doesn't affect energy transfer or ball flight by stipulating a WOOD BAT is in use. This makes perfect sense to me since the ball-bat collision is of such short duration and, according to the Braum site, a wood bat has no elasticity to speak of.

By way of comparision, the Braum site talks about the trampouline effect of metal bats, and that has me wondering -- does the existence of a trampouline effect mean contact is of significantly longer duration with a metal implement? If so, does grip configuration begin to play into the question of exit speed?

Also, what affect would this have on the ball's exit angle? It would seem to me if the ball "sticks" to the bat longer, there would be a greater tendency to pull, even if by just a few degrees, compared with a ball struck by a wood bat. It also occured to me that perhaps this would affect the spin direction or spin rate of the exiting baseball. Have studies documented any of these effects, or are we still talking about phenomena that takes place so quickly there is no measurable effect?

Sorry, I you might consider this more than a "few" questions.

Regards,
Jeff